1. Technical Field
The present invention relates in general to print support for data processing systems and in particular to print support for mobile data processing systems or systems otherwise disconnected from a print server. Still more particularly, the present invention relates to a mobile print system employing transient queues to transparently support printing by data processing systems currently disconnected from a selected print server.
2. Description of the Related Art
A large and increasing number of data processing system user employ laptop, notebook, or otherwise mobile data processing systems. Such mobile data processing systems may be selectively connected and disconnected from networks, and may be utilized when connected to a network to print to a remote print server and printer. Presently, if a user submits a print job to a remote printer which is disconnected from the client data processing system at the time, or is connected in an unexpected manner (e.g., at an unexpected port address), an error occurs. This is a serious limitation of print systems for mobile users, since the mobile data processing system may be disconnected from the print queues and therefore unable to submit any print jobs until reconnected to the network and/or print queue.
Other situations in which a data processing system becomes disconnected from a remote, network print server include inaccessibility of the server with the remote printer queue due to a network error or shutdown of the server, failure of a user to logon to the network.
In yet another situation, a network services requested in a data processing system may not be running. For example, an application, utility, or operating system component responsible for requesting print services from a desired queue may not be active, as in the case of a print queue which is infrequently utilized (e.g., a color inkjet printer rather than a grayscale laser printer). In some instances, the remote print queue selected for printing may not be shared, as when the owner disables sharing in order to complete a special print job.
Existing operating system and network facilities, such as the Windows.TM. 95 operating system available from Microsoft Corporation of Redmond, Wash., permits a user of a data processing system configured for network connection to work "offline" with the data processing system, where the operating system is aware that the data processing system is not connected to the network and/or the selected print queue. However, the user must manually set a printer to work offline if the printer is not available, and print jobs may not be submitted while the user is working "offline." When the printer becomes available, the user must manually disable the Work Offline option.
It would be desirable, therefore, to provide transparent mobile print support for situations in which a data processing system is disconnected from a selected remote printer. It would further be advantageous for the print support to automatically and transparently detect disconnection and reconnection of the data processing system to the selected printer or print server.